A new month-long initiative from Toronto's City Planning Division is bringing city planers to public spaces across the city.
The project, aptly called Planners in Public Spaces (PIPS), involves setting up "pop-up" planning booths at 15 separate locations across Toronto. It begins tomorrow (August 15th) at the Scarborough Town Center and runs until September 20th (full schedule
here).
"The goal is to get out there and engage the community and turn the planning department inside out," says Giulio Cescato, the PIPS project lead and community planner with the City. "We want to really engage people about planning in their community, to hear what they think the issues are. It is also a good opportunity for us to maybe teach people about what we do. I think planning is sometimes misunderstood as a profession and I don't know if everyone understands that we have many different types of disciplines of planners working in the city."
Each planning booth will be staffed by at least two planners. But, as Cescato, emphasizes, "When we say planners it's a broad brush that applies to lots of different things that people do. We have urban designers that deal with architecture and landscape architecture and consult on the design. We have community planners that do development reviews. We also have transportation planners, we have heritage professionals."
In order to get the word out, Cescato and his teamed up with the LEGOLAND Discovery Centre to launch an interactive event at Nathan Phillips Square. Next Thursday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., master builder Graeme Dymond and his "junior construction team" will construct an interactive lego city model outside of City Hall (see
Yonge Street's feature on Dymond
here) .
"We wanted to do a launch event to say to the city we're coming to a community near you and we wanted it to be interesting and fun and interactive," says Cescato. "I think it's going to be fantastic. [The team will be building] and city planners will be there explaining 'this is what we look for when a tall building appears in a neighbourhood', 'this is what we look for when a mid rise building is being erected'."
While the Nathan Phillips Square launch is an event on its own, PIPS booths will also appear all across the city at strategic locations--including subway stations and farmers markets--to engage members of the public who might not have been aware of the initiative in the first place.
"Each district is a little bit different," says Cescato. "Scarbourgh is different, Etobicoke is different from North York. The old city of Toronto is blessed with public spaces, but other-times we had to be more creative. Each event is slightly different and catered to the needs of that community."
Writer: Katia Snukal
Source: Giulio Cescato, City of Toronto